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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Who will replace Urban Meyer at Florida

Urban Meyer is stepping down as head football coach at the University of Florida. The Gators won two national championships and played for several SEC championships while under his leadership. Meyer stepped down last year, albeit for a day or so, due to health reasons, only to return.

This time I feel it is permanent. The Gators, despite having some of the best recruiting classes the two couple of years, lost more games than they had in over 15 years. Much debate is on how much losing his offensive and defensive coordinator in successive years has hurt the program. Two years ago Dan Mullen left to be the head coach at Mississippi State and last year Charlie Strong left to be the head coach at Louisville.

With the Gator offense sliding from one of the best in the nation to 80th has led many to wonder how much of the offensive success was due to Mullens, how much was due to Superman, err, Tim Tebow, and how much of it was really due to Meyer's coaching. Meyer had success before Tebow, but he did have Mullens by his side.

Though the defense was not as bad as the offense this year, it still had it's share of struggles. Much of it can be put on the long periods of time they faced on the field due to the short possessions by the inept offense, but regardless, it also was heading in the wrong direction.

So now that Meyer is stepping down, the question becomes, who will replace him. I have to think the top choices will be the super hot offensive coordinator from Auburn, Gus Malzahn, one of the two coordinators that left Florida recently, Boise State's head coach, Chris Petersen, or TCU's Gary Patterson.

UPDATE: I was obviously way off. The correct answer was, "Will Muschamp" ladies and gentlemen.